


time grow through our veins

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [6]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Adventures in Questionable Characterization and Alien Watch Mechanics, Body Dysphoria, Canon Adjacent With Some Liberties Taken, Clocks and Watches, Cultural Speculation, Dissociation, Eventual Canon Empurata, Forum Friends, Gen, Pre-Empurata, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-08 01:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8825416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Whirl leaves the Aerial Corps and becomes a watchmaker.This goes over about as well as can be expected.





	

Leaving the Aerial Corps means leaving the barracks. Whirl saw that one coming; he knew going into the wing commander's office that it would end with him being summarily stripped of current rank as well as Corps-issued weapon upgrades. Wing Commander Skyhigh is cutting and grasping at the same time - from the moment Whirl strides into his office with the relevant data pads thrust forward, he does his cold best to scare Whirl out of it and keep him bound in the Corps. He refuses to so much as glance at the data pads for nearly a cycle, which leaves Whirl to straighten his stubborn spine and verbalize the request in full. He can't afford to snark at the commander, no matter how _long_ the meeting drags on. The thought of busting out the window, guns blazing, and stalking off the grounds in a dramatic flounce becomes more and more tempting with each passing klik, and Whirl has to muster all his self-control to wrestle it back under control. This incident is going down as a black mark on the commander's record as well as Whirl's, to have a perfectly operational rotary alt resign from the wing without an approved transfer to an acceptable alternative function already lined up, and Whirl would feel guiltier about it if he weren't riding high on the determination to see this through. He keeps his hands clasped in front of him, the servos cinched together to clamp down on the faint tremor of nerves.

There are other, more tolerated request forms he could have filled out, but they'd all land him in some other, more tolerated position. The local Functionists would mull over his applications for a vorn or three to make him sweat it out and reconsider his actions, before shuffling Whirl into flight instruction or medivac, with a quiet lecture all lined up to remind him of his place, of how grateful he should feel to be so graciously indulged by the Senate, of how he should _never try this again_ , for everyone's sake.

The forms he has filled out instead are state-issued, sure, got the Senate's official code embedded in the scripts and everything. They're just dangerous to use because they have a blank space for him to fill in with a function of his choice, rather than a drop down menu with a set of standardized job titles. He could get as creative and complicated with the glyphs as he wanted. Until ( _if_ ) one of the functionaries approves his request and acknowledges his chosen profession, Whirl's going to be considered officially...unemployed. And the delay could take far longer than a couple of vorns - Functionists are vindictive fraggers when you cross them, and Whirl can't help but cross them.

He doesn't want another state approved, cookie-cutter function; a thousand other rotaries can slot into his current position like interchangeable cogs, and it'll make no difference. Whirl doesn't want to swap out the corps barracks for a medical transportation bay - he'd just be trading one block of space for one with swankier red decor. He can't picture himself all gussied up in white and red, if he made it far enough to be granted paramedic status. You have to be forged for the function to match the real medics. 

He might even be good at it, for all he knows. Maybe it would grate on his spark less than the Aerial Corps.

But that's not what he wants to use his hands for. 

His face a mask of disgust, the wing commander escorts Whirl off the premises once the data pads are finally, _finally_ reviewed and transmitted to the local branch of the Senate. The result is instantaneous, hilariously enough, considering how slow bureaucrats tend to move. Defiance sure lit a fire under their afts, huh. All of Whirl's security clearance codes are expunged from the system before they clear the barracks as he gets reclassified as 'civilian, unemployed.' Whatever functionary receives the request makes sure to use extra vicious glyphs to underscore 'unemployed' with an emphatic  [not in use; non-compliant.]

Could be worse. For something as impudent as this? They could have reduced him to [defunct; obsolete; superfluous]. They could have cut him loose, invalidated his serial code, and labeled him [empty; scrap metal] before turning him loose on the streets in one of the slum districts with the credits and employment history erased from his personal accounts. A non-compliance label is a warning, but it's not condemning him to the scrap heap. Not yet. As long as he proves himself useful and productive and _functional_ in the optics of the Senate before his saved credits run out, he can still salvage this. He has to believe that.

Whirl laces his servos tighter.

Changing jobs isn't impossible. But they're going to do their best to make him regret it until he falls back in line. If he didn't think he could handle it, he would've stayed holed up in his habsuite and never let his tinkering become more than a silly hobby. He'd rather be a little reckless than spend the rest of his functioning flying the same miserable patterns.

The commander does not let Whirl retrieve any belongings from his old habsuite. As far as they're concerned, it's all Corps property. Always has been. Whirl's spark spins fast and hot in his torso as he walks out, the vises and winders and micrometers and calipers and jeweler's blades tucked safe in his subspace compartments, and only allows himself a small, fierce grin once he's well and truly away.

-

Polyhex isn't known for being pretty. You go to Iacon or Praxus for pretty, and wealth, and culture. You come to Polyhex for...well, something. Whirl's _sure_ there must be something, but he's having a real hard time putting a name to it right now. Whoops.

But even compared to the rest of Polyhex, the apartment he finds for cheap is located in a particularly desolate sector. It's in a neighborhood that has functionism written all over it, and the architecture has suffered for it - the drab apartment towers have all been built to such a strict, uniform standard that Whirl stumbles up to the wrong door twice hoping that _this_ will be the building that recognizes his access panel codes. At the second building, his codes actually _work_ \- but the apartment manager heads Whirl off before he can get further than the lobby, explaining that unfortunately, the buildings in this sector are _so_ uniform that the access code locks occasionally repeat between buildings. Traffic is so scarce in the area that there's only one set of roads at ground level, with none of the intricate layering and lattices of highways that Whirl's always flown over in the heart of the city. He wanders through row after square row of identical complexes until he reaches the correct building; it's been patched on one side with uneven panels of cheap, construction-yellow metal that stand out sharply against the dull, monotonous grey of the rest of the street. After doing a quick circle around the building, Whirl transforms and lands, raising a hand to skim it across the seam where the construction plating meets the original grey, and coming away with the ends of his servos covered in flakes of rust.

The cold only registers once he's found his new quarters. The vicious, victorious burn in his spark kept him distracted while he was in the air, but now the temperature starts to register on his sensors. When Whirl stands on the tips of his pedes and stretches his legs to their fullest, he can just barely peek through the tiny square of a window on the eastern wall, and he makes out the faint shimmer of an undeveloped liquid nitrogen lake in the distance, just visible further down the road. Until that gets processed, drained by resource vendors, and paved smooth, the cold wind sucking between the apartment towers will play hell with exposed seams and wires. If he's feeling the cold _in doors_ , that's...even more concerning, because it means the environmental controls for the room are either off to save money, or damaged.

Upon further inspection of the walls and ceiling, Whirl suspects they were never installed in the first place. Awesome. So much for a consistent, state-mandated building code. The northern wall aligns with one of the replacement construction panels, and whoever did the work failed to weld it right, so the wind whistles through a significant gap to chill the entire block.

There's no wired 'net connection in the walls either; not that he brought a desktop monitor that he'd want to hook up, regardless. Whirl drags his longing hands away from the subspace containing his tools and start up supplies, and begins to empty his cockpit so he can set up a secure connection, before anything else. The datapad tucked into the compartment on the right side of his torso was purchased with his own credits and contains...a lot. Enough to give the local Functionists all they'd need to charge him, and take a few of his friends down with him. Most of the files are ideas for clock and watch designs that Whirl has been brainstorming for what feels like forever, but never had the time or freedom to make good on; a few others contain the databases and forms and queries he's pieced together in preparation for opening his shop. Evidence of premeditated questioning of his function, at the very least - the Senate would argue it is proof that something's wrong in his processor, the fraggers.

It's the encrypted forum that would incriminate him. The private signal from the data pad's built-in network connection should be masked, but every time Whirl accesses it he still feels a jolt of fear roll through his spark to ground in his pedes. He settles with his legs folded up close under him on the bare metal berth, huddling his shoulders and belatedly clamping his armor close to minimize how much of his internals the cold can reach. It sucks to waste energy warming his own frame when he's paying for his energon rations out of his own accounts, now, but he skimped on the apartment so he could afford a shopfront in a decent market sector deep in the city and that _matters._

And ha! What's a little chill, when Whirl's finally _free_? He feels - he feels invincible. Cold and shivery, but invincible. He huddles a little more, curling up on his side to tuck his legs in close to his frame, and waits while his pass codes transmit to the encrypted server.

  
\-- Whirl [WH] is online --  
\-- Dredger [DR] is online --  
\-- Starsteel [SS] is online --  
\-- Repository [RP] is online --  
\-- Merit [MR] is offline --  
WH: It's done!  
WH: It feels so good to be...out.  
SS: you did it? *o* really?!  
WH: Damn right.  
DR: well primus be damned  
DR: wherere you at now  
WH: The gloomiest corner of Polyhex I could find, apparently. :T  
WH: They promptly revoked my barracks access and two kliks later I was out the door, but I have everything I really need.  
SS: oh! that's good!  
RP: Wonder how long it will last...  
SS: repository, be nice! this is a big deal!  
WH: Long enough for me to afford a place with better environmental controls, hopefully. I'm going to freeze my servos off in here.  
DR: would definitely throw a wrench in the whole watch thing  
RP: I'm telling you, being this audacious isn't going to get you anywhere. All you've done is paint a target on yourself.  
WH: I'm aware, yeah. I _know_ I can do this.  
WH: Has anyone heard from MR?  
SS: nothing today, but he should be upgrading the encryption level soon...  
RP: If you're not forged for the express purpose of doing frivolous things or looking pretty for the Senate's whim, they're just going to strip you down for being useless.  
DR: youre a real gem rp  
DR: gotta love it  
RP: Dredger, it doesn't even apply to you. Wanting to become a frame designer is at least a function with a concrete demand. There _is_ no demand for clocks and watches - everyone has internal chronometers programmed in.  
DR: mmph  
WH: You really want to have this fight again? Because as of today, I'm no longer on a Corps schedule. I've got alllll the time in the world.  
RP: _You're unemployed, you fool_. Even if Merit intercepts your request and approves the function change, are you really going to be able to follow through?  
WH: Watch me.  
SS: ...  
DR: ...  
RP: ...  
WH: You see that? Admit it. Flawless victory. I'm going to be unstoppable!  
RP: True. It is hard for me to argue with a well-executed pun. But -  
WH: No, shh. On second thought, let's just bask in the moment.  
WH: Just imagine. Me, as unstoppable as the perpetual passage of time itself.  
SS: uh...huh...right...  
RP: But independent artificers are a rare breed for a reason, Whirl. All the best were forged for it billions of years ago, but most have gone the same way as the writers and poets.  
SS: oh no. *_*  
DR: oh here we go about the writers  
DR: you had to go and do wordplay on them didnt you wh  
WH: I won't apologize for _art_ , thank you.  
RP: ...Well. You just don't hear from them anymore. Funny how often that happens.  
RP: They ordered another check and purge today. 86.75% of pre-Nominus literature is already sequestered from public viewing unless you have Senatorial clearance. Now they're ordering us to censor anything deemed irrelevant to future progress of Cybertron because it's considered obsolete.  
RP: As though literature can go obsolete! All they really mean is that it's interfering with the Senate's cultural interests.  
SS: oh, repository. you should have said. *n*  
DR: youre gonna try to salvage some of it yeah  
RP: Whatever I can. But there's talk - something about bringing in a medic to wipe us databank alts personally, since we've been exposed to seditious materials.  
WH: What kind of medic can even do that?  
RP: I don't want to find out. If the Functionists feel secure enough in their political position to order something on this scale in Tetrahex, they're not going to let this go, Whirl.  
WH: I still have time.  
RP: Stop that.  
WH: Other mechs have changed function before and done just fine.  
RP: Gradually. Subtly. In a time _before_ you had to go through ten different layers of Senate red tape to do it, with the functionaries scrutinizing your every move.  
\-- Merit [MR] is online --  
MR: my audials are burning.  
DR: that isnt funny  
MR: maybe not, but gallows humor is all I have, really.  
MR: that, and crippling depression.  
MR: WH, you went through with it?  
WH: Yes. I should have stock ready in the shop in three days.  
MR: don't know if I can push that fast for something like this.  
MR: but if you've already got the right permits to sell there...  
RP: And you're not going to suffer any consequences for signing off on something like this?  
MR: guess we'll find out.  
WH: Thank you, thank you. You don't know how much this means to me.  
MR: I'm not going to be able to do anything but quietly sign and bury the file. just don't give anyone a reason to flag it. for both our sakes.

-

The urge to craft a solid rhodium watch with ice chip numerals glittering behind a sealed watch face is strong. Or, or, or! Something with dark plated titanium, sleek and quiet, with only a thin line of soft gold to indicate the cycle. Mayyybe a risqué little number with the internal workings exposed, so that you can see the wheels and springs and nanoscopic cold cesium oscillator working with perfect precision. Or better yet, three watch faces set in stepped bismuth, one counting the hour, one the year, one the vorn, all slowly turning in their own measured coils -

But. But. Ice is rare and expensive, and worse still, one of those things only a select few have for sale across the entire planet, most of it imported. Starsteel gave him advice on who they trust in Praxus to not rip off buyers with glass when he wants crystal, but Whirl couldn't order much in bulk when all his deliveries went through Corps security before reaching his hands. Prioritizing which designs to focus on takes up most of Whirl's first night in the apartment (recharging at night is for the weak) - he needs to make a good first impression on potential buyers, but he can't splurge on all the prettiest, most intricate ideas he has just yet, and it _sucks_. It's hard, and no one understands. He starts and forces himself to _stop_ working on half a dozen different projects before light peeks through his window, his servos dancing in jittery, ecstatic circles as he bends over the tiny table that came with the habsuite.

Halfway through the second night, Whirl catches on to the fact that his servos aren't normally _this_ jittery, even when his spark's a buzzing, frenzied, rapturous blur in his chest. A quick check of his internal readings shows that yes, he still needs to refuel, and no, the temperature has not risen at any point during the day, and skipping one night's recharge might be okay, but the combination of all three is starting to numb his processor, because he is not in fact unvincible. No. Wait. Unstoppable, he meant unstoppable. Agh, there go all the words in his head. Primus, he needs to sleep.

All told, he's managed to complete the internal workings for ten watches, despite the erratic route he took to get there, and Whirl lines them up five over five in exact rows with a warm glow in his chest. On second thought, that might just be because his spark chamber is currently the warmest point in a very chilly frame. It takes three cubes of energon to kick his internal homeostasis regulators back online, which is one more cube than Whirl budgeted in for his first week free, but afterward he can curl up to recharge without the shiver of his armor plates clamping down to jolt him awake.

Whirl doesn't leave the habsuite for those three days, and no one comes looking for him. He has his upstairs neighbor's schedule memorized in short order, because the mech leaves only two hours after moonrise and returns each morning like clockwork, but this isn't the barracks. No one is going to come shake him awake and drag him out to morning formation. He's not even certain his particular apartment complex _has_ a manager to come hassle him. At last, at _last_ he can cut and polish fluorite and tourmaline and lazulite and labradorite as dial faces and mount them in osmium casings, without having to hastily sweep the evidence up into subspace when it comes time for room inspection. There's not a spring out of place in the internal mechanisms, despite his lack of recharge the previous day; his hands adjust the innermost workings on the microscopic scale with quick, precise taps and twists without once missing the trick. He paints geometric shapes and patterns in thin strips of chalcopyrite; he fills fractals in with corundum that matches the tiny sapphires he uses in the pivot points. Where he can, he protects the more fragile metals and minerals with diamond, on the off chance someone purchases it expecting something that can stand up under heavy use and complex transformation sequences. Multiple times he stops to warm his hands, shaking them out and tucking them in close in the warm bundles of wires close to his core, and by the time he finishes everything his hands ache in the best possible way. It's like the opposite of cramped wires - it's like finally relaxing a fist that's been clenched for a thousand vorns.

In contrast, transforming to fly into the center of Polyhex the next morning? Feels like he sat hunched over in the throes of watchmaking for hours on end in a bitingly cold room - every single one of his transformation seams screams at him for not bothering to exercise his cog even once in his creative fugue, his rotors whine like they're ready to pop out, and Whirl only hits top speed when he reaches the main airway and runs into a palpable wall of warmer air over Polyhex proper.

He lands running, the precious watches rattling around with agonizing clicks in his subspace, because someone has beaten him to the shop.

And they have what appears to be a demolition crew with them. Whirl rushes forward, jamming his servos against the subspace compartment with his data pad when his hands move faster than his internal command to _open_. "Wait, wait! That's - I have the permits for that!" he calls, tapping the screen to find the ownership transfer forms. One of his pedes catches against the long line of the other foot when he missteps, and Whirl lurches forward dangerously before catching himself.

The head of the demolition crew turns toward Whirl and makes a derisive noise, his heavy yellow maskplate obscuring the rest of his expression. The rest of the crew pauses to watch, but they're in the middle of removing the front window panels from the storefront, which causes Whirl immense anxiety. If they drop that, he's going to have to pay for major building repairs out of his own pocket, because not maintaining the shop to marketplace code will get him evicted faster than you can say 'derelict' -

"Tch. Prove it," the head mech says, dismissive. He gestures back at the shop with a blunt servo. "This place hasn't been in use for nearly a week."

Whirl draws himself up to his full height as he strides right up to the mech; he's not anywhere near bulky enough to outweigh him, but he's tall enough that when the mech tries to loom over him, Whirl can raise his helm and glare right at his face. "Right! Here!" he says, punctuating the words by shoving the data pad screen-first at the mech with the permit files pulled up. He then folds his arms and bristles his plating, glaring twice as hard at the demolition crew to make sure they don't try anything. After several kliks of the head mech scrolling through the permits, Whirl starts to fidget and shift his weight from one foot to another, increasingly agitated. This isn't _right_ , this isn't _fair_ , he needs to get in and set up minimal displays and distribute his advertisements on the 'net. Basically he has a _life_ to live, and he doesn't want to lose another cycle to someone scrutinizing his hard-won paperwork. "It's all in order. 'Cos if you want to tear this place down, you go through _me_ ," he insists.

The crew's head grunts at last, his blue optics still dismissive as he looks up from the data pad. "Plan on leaving it empty often?" he asks, sounding bored. "City-state management doesn't like seeing useless, dark buildings smack in the middle of a high traffic commerce stratum. Scrap like that doesn't fly, here."

And he just gives Whirl this _look_. It's the kind of up-and-down look rotary alts tend to get from jets, in Whirl's experience - a kind of 'scrap _like you_ shouldn't be flying here, either' smirk - and having someone direct it at him here, of all places, in this context, makes his tanks roll with discomfort. "No. It won't be empty after today," Whirl snaps, straightening his spine and snatching his data pad back. "You can leave now."

With a shrug, the head mech beckons the rest of his crew, his helm cocked to the side. "Suit yourself."

Whirl realizes his mistake too late. The three demolition mechs loitering in front of his shop shrug in sync, and then set the front window down - on the sidewalk. Not back in the window itself. "Hang on, put my window back!" Whirl says, shoving the datapad back into his torso and storming after the demolition crew.

"What do we look like, construction? Have fun with that," one of the crew says, and the rest of them snigger in a cascade before transforming and blasting their engines as they motor onto the roadway. One of them leaves black tread marks all over the walkway in front of the shop, which is just. Just perfect. An empty window front and messy tracks all over, on the day he's supposed to make a good impression -

Whirl clamps his mouth shut in a line and folds his arms around his torso, the only comfort he allows himself. He's still out on the street, with Primus knows how many other shop owners and prospective patrons watching from the far side of the row and from inside other units. "...It's fine. It's fine. It's all. Fine," he mutters to himself, venting hard. Flying after the idiots to buzz them from overhead with a bountiful assortment of witnesses would just get him arrested, at best. "Whatever!"

Figuring out how to jam the window panel back into the frame takes the better part of half a cycle. If Whirl were a smaller mech and not fresh from Corps training, he'd have trouble just lifting the fragging thing without it toppling over to shatter on the road, or landing flat on his aft; his main issue is determining how to line it up and pop it into the frame without snapping something. It helps to envision it as a massive watch crystal he's fitting into an equally massive casing.

Well, it doesn't _help_ , technically, but it makes him feel better about how ridiculous he must look to passersby. Once the window is... _most_ of the way into the frame, Whirl barges into the shop via the door, and looks around to try to put the whole incident out of his processor.

And oh - there's a fresh layer of dirt smudges on the floor just under the window from those rude fraggers, but that's nothing a few rounds with a meshcloth won't clear up. But the rest? It's -

It's _perfect_.

The visor/optic enhancement designer who used to own the place displayed the sleekest new fashions by mounting them on plinths; he took the mirrors off the walls when he relocated to a higher end mall in the uppermost strata of Polyhex, but left the plinths with their angled hooks behind to save on the cost of prying the heavy pillars off the floor and transporting them halfway across the city. The place looks a little barren and still on first inspection, but Whirl skimped on the apartment and personal belongings in order to afford this and his work materials, and so the shop is already equipped with a built-in connection to the 'net, display lights, and a secure sales register on a wide, expansive counter for ensuring credit payments for purchases are logged properly. When Whirl taps the screen, a menu pops up with options for the overhead lights, the security system, the secondary security system linked to the _plinths_ themselves, meant to ensure no one but Whirl can remove items from the shop without permission. A quick peek into the backroom reveals that it's little more than a few meters square, not even wide enough for him to walk around in, with most of the far wall taken up with storage compartments.

He can't arrange his watches fast enough. Whirl knows nothing about how to best display things from a business perspective, but he switches watches between the plinths for another half-cycle until they look...nice. They look twice as nice when he adjusts the shop's settings, and the gems and crystal faces start glinting in the soft light. Whirl drums his servos together as he backs up toward the front entrance for a better look, squinting his optics and trying to imagine how the arrangement will look to another mech.

Impossible. He can't see the watches as anything short of beautiful, no matter how he switches them around or shifts the plinths. Seeing them laid out like this feels almost as good as creating them in the first place; Whirl could go grey right here and now, and he'd have died perfectly happy.

-

Whirl drifts in a blissful daze for the next week - he doesn't even mind the early cycle he needs to leave at each morning to reach the shop by the time most of the market sector opens. Riding the wave of inspiration, he crafts more watches late into the night, and in the process uses up the last of his original supply of crystal to complete more stock. He notices that no one enters the shop in all that time, but it's not a real concern yet; to occupy himself during the long day at the shop, he continues to work on the details of each new watch, tinkering at the register counter and enjoying the neutral, controlled temperature of the inner city while he can. His digital advertisements have been posted, he's altered the shop's exterior sign to display his glyphs - all he can do now is wait, and work. A few mechs pause outside the window or the open entrance, inspecting the shop with curious optics. It's only a matter of time before someone comes in.

One mech in particular catches Whirl's eye: a ground alt in muted brown and green who walks by the shopfront one day - and then hesitates the next, his blue optics curious as he peeks in the door. Whirl straightens up from his work desk to look attentive (and totally not desperate), his hands patting blindly until he manages to shove his tools into a drawer. But the mech scurries off by the time Whirl looks up again, and he sags in mild disappointment for the rest of the day.

But the next day, the mech walks in almost as Whirl's about to close up shop - Whirl hastily sets the watch he was packing up down and rounds the counter, unable to repress a hopeful smile. "Whirl's Watches! How can I help you?"

Without answering, the mech picks his way through the room with a cautious expression. He's not quite as tall as Whirl but built wider all around, and he takes immense care not to jostle anything as he shuffles between the watches on display. Whirl - does his best not to overwhelm the guy by hovering, but it's _hard_ \- he wants to explain every last detail, each tiny cog, the reasons behind his choice of metals - all things he's chattered about to his friends online, but never something he's dared to indulge in with anyone in person, in the Corps. They would have snapped at him to go practice at the target range, or fly off some of his useless energy _, again_ -

"Watches?" the mech asks, timidly. He's done a full circuit of the room before stalling out, his optics mostly on his own feet.

Whirl can already tell this is going to go _fantastically_. He has a good feeling. "Yes! They're external time keeping devices," he explains, tapping his hands together as he smiles proudly around the room.

"...But what if you've already gotta chronometer?"

All questions Whirl anticipated mechs would ask before opening. He's _got_ this. "It's like the Perpetuum Clock in Praxus - if you have a watch, it doesn't matter if your internal chronometer becomes damaged, or if you fall out of sync with the planetary standard and can't afford the medic bill - the watches contain their own cesium standard frequency that has been tuned with the official standard in Iacon, so that you're always on time!" Whirl explains. He's had a lot of time to practice his Functionist-mimicking reasons on Repository, though none of them ever really met their exacting standards.

The mech rocks back on his heels, his uncertain optics darting from Whirl to the watches and back again. "S'it fit if you transform?"

"Oh, yes! If your wrist plates completely split during transformation, I can help adjust a magnetized watch to an alternate location. Fittings are on the house," Whirl adds. He can't stop shifting from one foot to the other in his nervous excitement, so he finally springs to the nearest watch and starts describing it. "This one's titanium and magnetite, see, and -"

"Um...Right, I - I gotta go real quick," the mech interrupts. Though Whirl struggles not to droop in instant, spark-deep disappointment, he doesn't quite succeed. Then, the mech asks, his voice halting, "When d'you open?"

Whirl brightens. "From now on? 0700 to 2100. If that doesn't work, I can come earlier or stay later, if you need me to."

The mech starts shuffling back to the door, with Whirl trailing after him as though drawn by magnets. "Can a watch be...for someone else?"

Oh. Oho. Ohoho! Whirl leaps from gradual disappointment to taut joy in a split second, clapping his hands together with a grin. "Like a gift?" When the mech nods, Whirl smiles even harder. "Of course!"

A tiny smile crosses the other mech's face, even as he backs out the door, his feet moving on autopilot. "Right! Good. Um. Thank you!"

-

  
WH: Everyone! I made my first sale today!  
RP: Oh my Primus. You mad fragger, you've actually gone and done it.  
WH: I accept your stunned admiration. Feel free to applaud at your leisure, RP.  
DR: damn mech  
DR: which watch  
WH: The diamond and ruby. He said his amica was a medic.  
SS: oh, that's wonderful! i can't believe it!  
WH: I'm wounded. None of you have any faith in me. :(  
SS: i do! i do! i'm just surprised it happened so fast!  
SS: oh, found the image file! that was a pretty one.  
DR: ruby wont match true medic red depending on lighting  
WH: If he can live with it, I can.  
WH: How's everyone else doing?  
DR: same as always  
SS: *n* i got in trouble for taking too long to tune the two hundred range helices this morning.  
SS: i mean, i got the crystals tuned perfectly! just because i can't do it in a cycle like prism can...  
WH: That's dumb. You're just trying to be precise, right?  
SS: everyday i swear my sensory wings get more sensitive. it never sounds _right_.  
RP: Have you tried manually dialing down the sensors?  
SS: apparently that would make me 'less efficient.' i can't win...  
SS: i just want to leave! this city is a huge chiming mess! if whirl can do it, why can't i?!  
RP: **_Don't._**  
RP: What is it with you people trying to get yourselves caught?!  
WH: Whoo!  
RP: Don't enable them, for frag's sake. Starsteel, do you have _any_ savings? Any kind of plan? At all?  
SS: what doesn't go straight to the temple coffers, yes.  
SS: i've taken the navigation charting and reflex courses under a proxy. i know i qualify.  
DR: huh  
DR: smore than ive got  
DR: question is would you get a crew spot and get off world before they come lookin for you  
WH: If you file fast and make sure your savings are in your own account, not theirs, what's stopping you?  
SS: i - don't know, anymore. inertia, maybe?  
RP: _Common sense,_ maybe? A foreign concept to the rest of you, I'm sure.  
WH: If there's a chance for us to stop being miserable and stuck where we are, how is it wrong to want to change? _That_ should be common sense!  
DR: gonna have this fight again guys  
SS: dredger's right @_@ guys, we all want the same thing here.  
RP: It's just not practical.  
SS: maybe not but...i think staying like this might be worse.  
SS: i'm sorry, repository. thank you for worrying about me.  
RP: I worry about all of you idiots.  
WH: Even me? :P  
RP: Especially you. You're the biggest idiot here, so _someone_ has to.  
WH: I feel like we're having a real spark to spark moment here. I feel my lip a-quiver.  
RP: Oh, shut up. You're ridiculous.  
WH: /collapses, draped over my desk/ Oh RP! I never knew how you cared!  
RP: I take it back. I've changed my mind.  
DR: both of you are ridiculous  
SS: i need to head out for evening tuning...  
WH: You sure?  
SS: for tonight, yeah *~*  
SS: but if one more person calls me facet, i shall scream.  
DR: night  
SS: night!  
WH: And I have a new watch to design!  
RP: Spending all your credits already?  
WH: No, you aft. I have...wait for it...a budget!  
WH: I'm being _so_ responsible. You don't even know.  
RP: Impressive.  
DR: have fun  
WH: Having the time of my life!

-

The next watch doesn't sell for another agonizingly long week. Whirl flitters around the shop, smoothing and dusting, too energized to sit still long enough to finish fitting the face on his latest watch-in-progress until he finally sits himself down to _work_. It fills the empty display where the purchased watch sat, and order is restored to his shop.

Someone walks in on the fifth day, a jet with sharp white wings, but when Whirl hurries to explain the use of his watches, the mech sneers, his green visor dismissing Whirl with a flicker as he sweeps back out the door. "Pointless," the mech calls over his shoulder before transforming, and Whirl can't bear to look out the window again for the rest of the shift, in case the jet prowls by to sneer some more. It took everything in Whirl's power not to punch the smug fragger right in the nose, and he wouldn't trust his self-control to hold out a second time. After briefly fantasizing about pulverizing the mech with a flying high jump kick to avenge his watches' honor, Whirl breaks out of his sulk and putters around the shop some more. But the dismal mood lingers over him until he returns the next day for a fresh start; his freezing icebox of an apartment, located in what _must_ be the most overcast, foggy corner of the metroplex area, is not conducive to improving his mood during recharge hours, and if he goes to whine to the forum, Repository will never let him hear the end of it.

A black, white, and medic red mech pelts through the door at midday, venting like they've just driven here in a panic. Whirl nearly falls over as he jerks upright at the sudden entrance. "No time. On refueling break. _Tell me you have one in black_ ," the medic says, with a huge gulp between each sentence. They stare at Whirl like a mech possessed.

The energy is contagious. Whirl springs into action, hopping over his desk and skidding to a stop by the black metal and liquid mercury glyph watch on display near the far corner of the room with a dramatic flourish of his hands.

"OhPrimusit'sperfect, pleaseandthankyou-!" the medic says in another rush, their red optics awestruck, and they fling their credit account details at Whirl's business register before Whirl can even suggest a price. Whirl magnetizes the watch to the mech's upper arm - "I have extra scalpels in the wrist" - as the register ticks up and up in his heads-up display. It's more than Whirl was gonna ask for. _Way_ more. The medic's out the door again with a babbled thanks, and Whirl is left in a daze as he recovers from the sudden rush and movement before the glee sets in. He allows himself a fist pump before twirling off the display floor and seizing the in-progress watch off his worktable. His spark in a blissful static, Whirl finishes mounting the Praxian crystal in its casing - when he's finished, it'll resonate at a certain frequency, like an external alarm setting for a chronometer.

When he tells Starsteel that evening, they inform him that they'd ship over every crystal in the Gardens if it meant they never had to raise another tuning fork in their life.

-

It takes time. It never stops taking time.

But word spreads, and new faces turn up at Whirl's door - a spectrograph who heard from a paramedic friend - a Luna shuttle who can barely squeeze through the door, who needs a watch for when passing through atmo screws with his chronometer - a frame painter, radiant in four different iridescent shades, who snatches up Whirl's bismuth and chalcedony and fire opal watches all in one trip.

After _that_ one, Whirl starts to see more mechs than just the ones who live and work in the shop's vicinity. An energon filtration unit walks in even more shyly than Whirl's first customer, fumbling with xer credits and already half-convinced xey won't be able to afford anything. Whirl doesn't mind undercharging, not now that he has a semi-steady flow of patrons, and _especially_ not when the very next cycle a noblemech purchases the ice-shard and iridium metal band Whirl finally felt secure enough to splurge on crafting. People who can't afford to reprogram or replace their internal chronometers start to appear like clockwork, and Whirl strongly suspects that someone at the local mediclinic is referring patients to him, because they call him a chronosmith instead of a watchmaker when they walk in for a consult.

Which is _amazing_. Sometimes progress is slow, but then another high society socialite will request some specific material, with the promise of a customization bonus, and Whirl throws himself into it with his whole spark. He makes more than enough to break even - he could afford a better apartment, but he'd rather save or spend it on new materials and replacement tools. He's almost fond of his block of a habsuite, actually, now that he has heated pads and weighted blankets to curl up under on windy days, but it's not home. The shop is.

Once, some old mech brings in a clock for Whirl to _repair_. Whirl nearly snaps his own fingers off with anxious fretting as the mech lets him inspect the ancient old device. "It belonged to an old, old friend," the mech says, his vocalizer crackling not from damage but from sheer age. "I've done what I can, but not many nowadays remember how to do such work."

Whirl never does get that mech's name. But he repairs the clock - it's truly an antique, of the like Whirl's never seen before, with cogs ten times the size of what Whirl uses and a quartz based mechanism rather than cesium. Whirl sends the clockwork device on its way with a longing spark, and spends the next few vorns designing intricate fractals and spirographs and fanciful patterns to make himself feel better.

The majority of his watches sell to Polyhexans - Whirl's well into ten thousand years of work before he starts receiving orders and visitors from nearby cities like Rodion. He still runs into the occasional snooty-faced aft who waltzes in just to smirk and threaten to knock over the display plinths as they leave, but it's a rare thing, and most patrons come into the shop with some idea of what they're looking for. Holographs that project a tiny image of the time come into fashion for a bit - or at least, Whirl gets repeat requests for something similar after the first test run he crafts, and since he's the only watchmaker he knows of, that _is_ the fashion. Heh.

One person comes in from the Corps. Just one. "You really did it," Stratus says, his loose rotor blades clamped tight to his back so they won't jostle anything while he walks, agape, staring more at Whirl like he's an alien creature than at the watches. He buys one of the simplest devices Whirl has in stock at the time and then flees, as though afraid Whirl-itis might be contagious.

That night, Whirl sets to work on a bulky, solid steel watch for a miner. It's not his prettiest work, but the patron wanted something that would blend in with his own frame. From what Whirl could decipher from the message, passed on by Dredger, the miner is worried that his supervisor has been manipulating the timestamps to short workers on pay, but they want an isolated timekeeper to measure when they doubt their own chronometers.

Whirl sends it along for free.

-

  
SS: ...i passed.  
SS: I DID IT! *u*  
DR: really  
DR: where are you shipping out from  
SS: the spaceport at Iacon, asap!  
WH: They've got your paperwork and everything? That's incredible!  
SS: well...  
SS: they would, if i filed any...  
DR: oh no  
WH: Wait. You're _not_ filing for a function change?  
SS: nah, repository is right. too risky.  
SS: i have my ride. i'm out of here.  
WH: Please tell me you haven't signed on with space pirates.  
SS: fine, i won't tell you, i'll just tell dredger.  
SS: hey dredger, guess what!  
DR: oh no oh no  
DR: wheres rp we need an intervention  
WH: How did you even find pirates? Are they even real anymore? I thought the Senate clamped down on unauthorized space travel ages ago.  
SS: they tried *u*  
WH: ...Fair enough! Are you never coming back, then? Changing functions is one thing - shipping out and going totally rogue seems like another.  
SS: mmm...probably not without new credentials! i'm gonna be starsteel for real, now.  
SS: let's see the temple reject my designation change forms when i'm in SPACE!!!  
\-- Repository [RP] is online --  
RP: You all aren't going to _believe_ what I've just found.  
DR: ss is leaving to become a space pirate help  
RP: I'm already aware. That's not important right now.  
SS: *o*  
WH: Disappointing reaction. Not nearly enough indignation, very lackluster. I only rate it a 3/10 for the twist where you already knew. Laaame.  
RP: Stop it, this is huge! I can't believe he's done this, no one has published something this seditious in - in -  
DR: oh primus its a writer thing  
WH: Spit it out, RP, I am dying to know what trumps space pirates for you. Because for me? That's pretty hard to beat.  
RP: Someone has _written poetry._  
SS: ...is it...very _good_ poetry?  
DR: i will never get you rp  
DR: mechs write all the time  
RP: That drivel mechs like Pentameter vomit up to appease the Senate? That's not poetry, that's pandering. Propaganda.  
RP: They write what they need to write in order to stay in their pretty towers and keep their pretty sponsors in the government happy.  
RP: Who doesn't love a good, patriotic jingle about the glory of Cybertron, and how vital everyone is in their designated function? Ha! Ha _ha_ ha!  
RP: Why am I talking about cyber realism. Cyber realism is putrid.  
WH: RP, I don't know why you talk about _anything_ half the time, but y'know? Still curious about the poetry guy and why he's got you in a tizzy.  
RP: Right.  
RP: He's not state-sponsored, that's for sure. This mech is doing things with words I haven't seen since they purged the archives. No one in the Cultural Bureau would sign off on this.  
DR: words are words rp  
DR: glyphs mean things  
RP: Nonsense. They haven't managed to kill puns yet. I'm not sure even the Functionist Council has that kind of willpower.  
WH: Hear, hear!  
RP: But I'm serious. This mech is alluding to the slave-mines of Castamere and comparing it to the plight of the modern worker.  
WH: Oh. So when you say 'seditious,' you...literally mean seditious. Glad that's cleared up!  
RP: I say what I mean.  
SS: oh dear @_@  
SS: repository, please tell me you didn't download it...  
RP: What else am I good for, if not for preserving this?  
RP: Do you know the kind of risk he took, uploading something like this to the 'net?  
WH: And you all thought _I_ was a nutjob. Oh wow. Wonder what kind of stone cold cords it takes to publish that kind of stuff.  
RP: But really - it's more than just the content. These rhetorical devices shouldn't even work with how Neocybex glyphs are supposed to be arranged.  
DR: aint got a clue what any of this means  
DR: but glad youre happy i guess  
RP: He leaves deliberate spacing and enjambment of the phrases to ensure key glyphs come at the end of a line and underscore or contradict what comes above.  
WH: When I quit my job to make beautiful watches, I get a lecture. This guy wins your undying loyalty and admiration?  
WH: This is unfair. Our friendship is in shambles. I want my credits back.  
SS: repository...  
RP: But the meter - unless he's pronouncing some of these differently, I can't tell where the beats are meant to fall.  
RP: Unless.  
RP: Oh Primus.  
SS: what, what is it?  
RP: He's writing freeform verse.  
RP: _The absolute madmech_. I love it.  
WH: I'm starting to think that's your version of a compliment. A retroactive thank you for all the times you've complimented me, then!  
RP: I want to tattoo this all over my entire body.  
WH: Aaand now you made it weird.  
RP: Do you know how radical it is to break cadence in poetry these days? To play with words like this? All the Senate's work standardizing Neocybex for maximum efficiency and minimum creativity - undone.  
DR: i know radical is a dangerous word  
DR: radical makes people dead  
SS: dredger...  
DR: its true  
RP: Oh. When you hover over the glyphs, there's more hidden meaning to read.  
RP: _Intratextual layering._  
SS: (i don't think they're listening to us...)  
DR: (not sure anything beats fancy words)  
WH: (SS? Hey. Good luck with your space adventures. Hope it isn't an elaborate ruse to get you caught.)  
SS: (eheh, thanks! i'll be fine! i'll finally be free.)  
WH: (There's nothing better.)

-

Two hundred thousand years, he's happy.

Two hundred and seventy five thousand, one hundred fifty years, if he's in the mood to dwell on specifics.

(He's not.)

It's barely a blink in his life. It's not nearly enough.

He's happy and alive, and he remembers later that he's working on a new watch, the day that it happens. Whirl has a steady stream of custom requests to complete, but this design is one of his own ideas. Something old and new at the same time - he has wanted to try something with a three dimensional internal structure, so that the wheels and levers form a delicate, ever-rotating sphere, inspired by Hax game boards. It'll probably need to be balanced in a liquid medium to allow freedom of movement, and hung on a chain rather than strapped tight to a wrist. It's an experiment.

The door chimes now, when someone enters the shop. Whirl looks up, still smiling and (makes the worst mistake of his life) says, "Hello! Whirl's Watches!"

"So I've heard," the stranger says, clicking his vocalizer (rip it out) as he walks to the first display watch, with purpose in his step.

Whirl should know it's going wrong from the first, disgusted twist of the mech's mouth, as he stares down at the watch. "Not...quite finished, hm?" the mech says, tapping a claw on the watchface.

It _is_ finished, as it so happens - the watch is one of those with the internal workings peeking out from a tiny half-moon window, the actual watch face an oval of clear ice that doesn't quite obscure the rest of the mechanisms within. The style isn't for everyone; mostly it appeals to the higher class mechs looking for something aesthetically appealing and coy rather than mechs who need a watch for a concrete purpose. Whirl enjoys practicing the style, since it's a challenge to make them still, even with all the centuries of work his hands have had to adapt and expand his skill.

But even if Whirl adores every watch he makes, he's better at figuring out what styles appeal to people who _aren't_ hopelessly in love with clockwork. "That one isn't for everyone!" he says, coming around the counter. The other mech draws away when Whirl walks past him to find some of the simpler, more functional designs on display. He doesn't have (any time left, running out of time) very high hopes for this guy being interested in anything, really, but Whirl will be as boisterously earnest as he needs to be to either win the mech over or (kill him) kill him with kindness right until he's out the door. Getting snarky with a patron would only feel good in the moment, until Whirl's left alone and it curdles his tanks for the night. "These two over here are more compact and easy to read, if you prefer -"

Whirl turns, and sees the mech hasn't moved an inch away from that first watch. Something in the mech's posture...unsettles Whirl. Too still? Too intent? "Sir?" Whirl asks, when the mech continues to ignore him in favor of the watch.

"Please, call me Ironbinder." The way the mech pronounces his own designation sets Whirl even further on edge; it's too brittle, with no reverberation. Whirl hears each syllable, but they don't flow enough for it to sound like a real name. It's...weird. "Tell me. You've been in business here...3,315.0602 vorns, correct?"

"...I - yes, that sounds about right," Whirl says, faltering and squeezing his hands together before cautiously turning to face Ironbinder. It's...not _that_ strange a question, right? So why does Whirl feel so nervous? The mech's guess is too accurate a number to be a _guess_ -guess, but Whirl's original advertisements for the shop are easy enough to pull a timestamp from on the 'net, though he has updated and posted newer content since then. "And still going strong!" he adds, injecting extra cheer into his vocalizer.

Ironbinder nods, with an absent air - he taps his claw on the half-moon face one more time. He's on the larger side of the flier scale, though not nearly shuttle range. Whirl can't quite put a servo to what exactly the mech's alt would be - he has heavy thrusters in his feet, but the panels arranged in a fan across his back look too thin and curved to form jet wings. He's a dark, muted grey with thin green accents along major armor lines. His yellow optics finally slant towards Whirl, an odd smile on his face (punch it until he doesn't have a face anymore) as he says, "And they all operate entirely independently from one's internal chronometer? Surely it would have been more efficient for you to simply connect them to Cybertronian standard through the network?"

"They're standalone devices," Whirl says; it's hard to sound cheerful in the face of Ironbinder's off-putting expression. "In the event one's chronometric function is damaged or compromised, the watch would serve as a backup. No network connection necessary - it's already synchronized."

"But you have sold these things to people with no such deficiency," Ironbinder counters, with another dismissive, chiding click. "Oh, Whirl. You could have saved yourself so much by utilizing the remote server, and not indulging in these...awkward ostentations."

Oh. Now he's just being nasty. Whirl jerks to attention, all semblance of hospitality lost. "Well, I can't speak for every mech's taste," he says, pinching off his voice to prevent himself from adding, 'I'm not sure you _have_ any.' "I'm sorry you don't see anything that really appeals to you today -"

Ironbinder cuts him off. Whirl bristles with indignation, and catches himself glancing at the door, hoping to Primus that someone else will walk in and give Whirl an excuse to back out of this conversation, which has become the very picture and definition of uncomfortable. "Oh, to the contrary. I come to you with an offer. I understand you create customized works...?"

Oh no. Urrrrgh. Whirl just...wants this guy gone. He scrounges up what remains of his rapidly-wilting customer service face and gives a thready smile. "I do, yes. You have a particular watch design in mind?"

With an airy wave of his hand, Ironbinder steps toward Whirl, his longer legs covering the distance with slinky, unsettling ease. Whirl darts through a different row of displays in a hasty effort to reach the counter - once he has that between him and Ironbinder, he pulls out his widescreen data pad, reserved for designing and sketching, and smiles so fiercely at Ironbinder that it almost crinkles his optics. Haha, see? Not running, just eager to get to work! Flawless acting, Whirl. He pulls up his modelling program with a flick of a servo and babbles, "So, what would you be looking for in the watch face -"

"You mistake me," the mech says, blunt. "It is not that kind of offer."

(running out of time)

Whirl could count on one hand how many kliks he stands frozen, before his processor kicks back into gear. He sets the data pad down with a careful _tak_ , his head tilting to the side as he watches Ironbinder, wary. This whole conversation has felt weird from the start, and for some reason it's firing off all of Whirl's old Corps-trained alarms. He dismisses them from his HUD, but only because launching himself at another mech on some baseless sense of alarm doesn't fly when you don't have a function that gives you permission to leap to conclusions like a hair trigger afthead. "I'm...sorry?" he manages, at last. It's hard to form words that aren't 'frag off' or 'no, creepy mccreeperson,' or some variation on that theme, but Whirl...manages. It's a heroic effort on his part, if he does say so himself.

Ironbinder won't stop smiling that condescending half-smile, his optics cool as he steps up to the far side of the counter. "I represent a committee in the Senate. You've done well enough for yourself in this function, despite your...incompatibilities. The Senate would like to offer you sponsorship. It would only require a few tweaks to your process."

It feels like a punch to an empty tank - Whirl hasn't felt it in vorns on vorns. Maybe Ironbinder expects the announcement to be a pleasant surprise, but the shock spoils in Whirl's uneasy spark. Senate means Functionists, more days than not, and Whirl had _thought_ Merit buried his file so Whirl could fly under their radar, not have one show up to offer him...whatever the frag this is. Whirl closes one hand into a tight ball on the desk, feeling outright queasy. "Tweaks? What tweaks?" he asks, his vocalizer dry with static. "What do you mean?"

The mech doesn't appear particularly concerned with Whirl's obvious unease; he inspects his own claws instead, still flashing that knowing smile on his smug slagging face. "As I said, there are numerous methods that could be used to streamline your process and eliminate waste. Your sponsors would provide you access to materials at a discounted price, and you could create more...ornamental pieces, so long as they use the network time protocol to directly display the Cybertronian planetary standard. This would help avoid any unfortunate potential mishaps or inaccuracies in your devices; you wouldn't have to waste time or resources on anything more than a signal receiver inside them. No extraneous mechanisms necessary."

They want him to stop making watches.

That's what Ironbinder is _saying_ , under all the chatter. They'd let Whirl design pretty, superficial clockfaces, but the insides? All the bits and cogs and pivots and regulators, all the nano and microscopic components that Whirl's fingers dance over and tease apart as he lovingly slots them into place? They want to hollow it all out.

Whirl thought the Senate would just order him to stop altogether, if they ever took too much offense to his chosen function. This - this would be _worse_ than stopping, to Whirl. "I could make that kind of device for whatever Senator would like one," he says, his voice coming out uncertain when what he _wants_ is to mollify Ironbinder. He can't call what would result from such work a 'watch,' though - it would just be a device. "However, I believe that doing so for all the rest of my watches for the public would render them less useful and functional, and so -"

"Who said," Ironbinder says, distant and bored, "that you would continue to produce non-standard devices for public consumption? The Senate is offering to sponsor you so that you follow set regulations and dispense functional, finished products to appropriate venues for Cybertron's benefit and appreciation. You would live quite comfortably -"

 _Oh_.

So this is why Repository is always so angry. Repository and their hated, pitied modern poets, writing to the Senate's tune. Whirl needs to vent - he's aching for air - but he can't seem to remember how vents _work_. Very annoying. His spark won't stop shuddering at the nausea rocking his frame, a hot, dizzy fear. Making the empty, meaningless shape of a thing, with none of the substance...

"No, thank you," Whirl says, his voice faint.

"What did you say?" Ironbinder asks. He looks too bored to be irritated, picking at a fine metal-haired brush that Whirl left out on the desk. A rush of irrational fury hits Whirl hard - he doesn't want the Senate fragger touching _anything_ in here.

(time's running out)

"I appreciate the offer -" It grates on the way out of his vocalizer "- but I would like to continue to create the more _functional_ product. Sir." Whirl's spark won't stop pulsing with sick fear, but Whirl stays firm, raising up just a tad on his toes to minimize Ironbinder's height advantage. If he hits enough Functionist key words, maybe he'll just let it go -

(time's up)

Whirl thought Ironbinder was cold before. But now - the mech's presence in the shop feels like the wind off the old nitrogen lake, cutting right through to Whirl's wires. "Your definition of 'functional' appears to differ from the Senate's standard," Ironbinder says. The smile finally vanishes, and though Whirl can't say he misses it, the dead-eyed stare full of cool judgment is far worse to have leveled at him. "Your devices are not _necessary_ , Whirl. They have some popular appeal, it seems, but make no mistake - they are superfluous at best, useless in many respects...subversive in others."

Oh look. Panic! Time to panic! "Subversive?!" Whirl squawks, genuine distress escaping him. "What - they're synchronized with planetary time regardless, what _difference_ does it make if I tune it myself?! They tell the exact same time, they just tell it themselves -"

Ironbinder leans close over the desk, and Whirl chokes off his next protest with a strangled sound. The mech's wings fan out a little more in a wide, arcing circle - Whirl finally recognizes it as some kind of parabolic antenna, for communications - and he stares at Whirl like he's garbage. The kind of scum you scrape off the underside of a leaking energon dispenser that's gone sour. "The time," he says, "is when the Senate _decides_ it is. Perhaps you see the potential conflict of interests that entails. You should never have meddled with time, Whirl."

An alert flashes bright red in the periphery of Whirl's vision - he needs to either vent, dump himself in something cold, or reset his ventilation system to expel the excess heat building up in his spark chamber.

Haha. What a funny joke. He's never felt so cold.

"You should leave. Now." Whirl points to the door, because it's too late. He doesn't - he can't -

Ironbinder lingers, then pulls back from the counter, heading to the door without another look back. "Just remember. The Senate's patronage can be very generous, if you ever find yourself having a change of spark," the mech says, disinterested again. He glances down at the first watch before walking out of the shop. "...A senseless product."

Whirl watches, mute, and stands there trembling behind the counter until Ironbinder's well out of sight.

Then he locks the shop down, and bolts for the apartment.

-

  
WH: MR?! Where's Merit? Is he online?!  
DR: aint heard from him  
DR: aint heard from anyone at all lately  
DR: ss is well out of the solar system last i heard and rp wont show up cept to talk about literature  
WH: There's got to be a way to ping him...  
WH: Primus, I really need -  
WH: I. I think I'm in trouble.  
DR: what kind of trouble  
WH: Senate trouble. Some mech came in an -  
DR: oh frag  
DR: you alright  
WH: He wanted me to make the watches wrong, and said time was subversive, and it didn't make any sense!  
DR: vent mech  
DR: did he tag you with anything  
WH: No, he didn't touch me.  
DR: hes probably still got your frequency  
WH: We have the encryption, I thought - slag. _Slag._  
DR: yeah  
DR: lemme pm mr  
DR: if they didnt haul you in to get jail time...  
WH: I don't know what to _do_.  
DR: stay calm  
\-- Merit [MR] is online! --  
MR: WH. DR.  
WH: MR, I think I fragged up. He just showed up and I panicked.  
MR: who did? what designation did he use?  
MR: be precise. the glyphs matter.  
WH: Ironbinder.  
WH: No. Iron Binder? He said it so weirdly -  
MR: I can't help, wh.  
MR: I don't think I'm going to be able to help _myself_ , even.  
DR: what  
WH: MR, who was he?!  
MR: it's already too late. for both of us, I suspect.  
MR: DR, this line is going to be compromised, if it isn't already.  
DR: slag  
DR: this is it then  
WH: Merit, _what do we do_? I don't understand, but I'm so sorry -  
MR: WH, this isn't your fault. he's not going to come for you directly. but I need to run. now.  
MR: goodbye. I'm sorry, too.  
\-- Merit [MR] is offline! --  
WH: ...  
DR: ...  
WH: ...Why couldn't I just have this? Just this one...  
WH: Nevermind.  
DR: wh  
WH: Sorry. You should probably go, too, if the forum's fragged because of me.  
DR: listen  
DR: come to rodion  
DR: if it all hits the fan  
DR: easier to hide and start from the bottom if you arent in your home city  
WH: I just don't know what to do anymore...  
DR: just come find me okay  
WH: ...Thank you.  
DR: glad ss wasnt here to see this  
WH: Ha. Yeah. Just imagine how torqued off RP is gonna be about this.  
DR: yeah  
DR: talk to you later  
WH: Bye.

-

  
RP: Hello? Is anyone on?  
RP: Where are you all, I have something to -  
RP: ...  
RP: Oh. I see.  
RP: Well, you'll never take me alive, you spark-sucking fraggers.  
RP: You can't delete everything off the 'net. Files can't burn.  
RP: This is a fact, which I am stating for the record.

-

Whirl doesn't leave.

He goes to the shop the next morning, because he'd rather wait to be arrested someplace he's happy, doing what he loves. What he was forged to do.

No one comes.

After the fifth week, Whirl just feels lost. Three patrons come in during that time, purchase watches, and leave unaccosted. Whirl's smile and voice shakes as he helps them, but only the frame painter, Antimony, notices. He's a long-time patron, and tells Whirl to get some rest with a kind smile before skipping out the door.

After the first year, Whirl's adrift. He makes watches in a daze; he has plenty of designs already sketched out, but his thoughts scatter when he tries to draw up something new. He hasn't lived in constant, low-level anxiety since his last few weeks in the Corps, back when it felt like his change of function forms would burn a hole through his data pad for everyone to see the smoldering evidence in his chest. Do the security cameras on the main road follow Whirl longer than other passing mechs? Will he wake up one day and see a surveillance dish camped out, listening from outside his window?

Ten years, and the loss of his friends starts to really sink in. Whirl hasn't dared to visit the chat since Merit's warning, and has no other way to contact the others. Even if Starsteel weren't off-planet, the encryption in the forum ensured none of their personal frequencies were ever exposed. Whirl hadn't realized how few other people he spoke to regularly, until now. Some slow weeks, he can go a full day without activating his vocalizer unless he's talking to himself or to his watches. He flies home, and eats, and recharges, and flies back to work feeling sluggish and alone come morning. Haha. He doesn't really remember how to _make_ friends - he hasn't needed to practice in...

He almost gets another vorn. He forgets some mornings to watch over his rotors as he flies; he doesn't jump when he hears someone whose designation includes 'Iron' when he stops to buy energon and oil treats. He worries about Merit, and the others, but there's nothing he can think to do that won't make it all worse.

Someone's waiting outside the shop when Whirl leaves, one night. It's dark out, but the constant golden glow of the city still lights the street as the night shift rotates in to work - Whirl should have seen the mech approach, but instead he jumps half a meter when he turns and spies the short, stumpy mech watching him with folded arms. "Prim- sorry, sorry," Whirl gasps, one hand waving in flustered circles. "Can I help you with something? I actually just closed up, but I can still -"

"'Nough babbling." The mech lifts his maskplate and spits something on the ground, a foul look in his optics. "Time to have a talk. You're the owner of this establishment?"

"Yes, that's me." Whirl's still proud of that much, at least.

The mech snorts. "And you're makin' a pretty credit, I'm sure."

It's not the first time a conversation has left a sour taste in Whirl's mouth right from the start, but he can't for the life of him connect this grungy, scratched-up mech with Ironbinder; the mech just doesn't have an especially professional vibe to him. "I get by," Whirl hedges, tensing the armor plates of his back and arms. He'd thought this tier of Polyhex was relatively well patrolled by the local law enforcement, and hasn't had any notable trouble with theft, but...this feels like he's about to be mugged. Is he about to be mugged? He _really_ does not want to get mugged today.

"That's nice. Real nice." The mech looks at Whirl, then up at the shop's sign. "Tell you what, mech. This tier recently came under...new management. Seems like your row had it pretty easy for a little while now. Won't cost much to make sure it _stays_ pretty easy."

Whirl stands there feeling dumb, long enough for him to run four separate keyword searches on the 'net to figure out what this guy means by a change in management. Nothing pops up on the regional Senate page, no announcements or alerts from the local business bureau...

Wait a second -

"Is this a shakedown?" Whirl says, in disbelief. "Who do you think you are?!"

The mech spits again. "Name's Pizzo. And I think I'm the nice guy you get to deal with today. Tomorrow, if you don't feel like dealing with me? You deal with the Heavies. They're not nice."

Since when do racketeers have a foothold this high in Polyhex? Whirl has moved straight from 'concerned' right into 'torqued off.' "I'm comming the police," he snaps - not even sure he'll do it for real, but too affronted to give an inch to a rude slagger like this. "I'm not interested in being extorted, short stuff."

Pizzo shrugs, his maskplate settling into place with a _click_. "Not extortion. Protection. It's not credits you would miss, anyway." When Whirl continues to glare at him in a fury, the mech snorts. "Well. Whatever. Nice shop."

Pizzo transforms and begins to slowly drive away, dragging his tires as though waiting for Whirl to change his mind. His alt mode is so dingy a grey-green that Whirl can barely keep track of him against the road. Whirl double and triple checks the shop's upgraded security system, his fans and rotors all spinning in agitation that only starts to filter out when Whirl transforms with a running leap and soars over Polyhex to go to the apartment. All he wants is to get home, sit down, and work on clockwork until the tremors smooth out of his hands.

He winds up calling the cops, instead, too keyed up once he reaches his habsuite to sit still and focus. It's not his best idea, but - what else is he supposed to do? Whirl doesn't _want_ official attention, but he doesn't want to be robbed, either. This is what the police are here for, right? Right?

Ha. Funny joke. The responder Whirl gets on the line barely pretends to listen. They keep Whirl there for almost two cycles, asking him to describe the encounter in senselessly repetitive detail, and by the end of the call Whirl's ready to scrape his own paint off in pent-up frustration. [There does not appear to be an actionable threat to your frame at this time,] the responder comms, with the air of someone dealing with a hysteric.

Whirl wants to scream. [What about tomorrow, if that guy shows up with other people and threatens me?!]

[Please be aware that misuse and abuse of the police comm network for false reports is itself grounds for a warning -]

[What?!]

[- and repeat offenders will be prosecuted.]

Whirl hangs up first, before the growing urge to rip out his entire comm system gets the better of him. He forces himself to recharge, because it's almost past the middle of the night and if he frets over this straight through til morning, he'll be facing whatever happens in an exhausted haze.

But he doesn't make it through the night. The shop's security wakes him after only three cycles, and Whirl lurches up and off the berth straight out of defragmentation as the initial jolt of alarm fades - that's the entrance. Someone's in the shop, someone's with his watches -

Whirl's processor aches as five more alarms jolt him rapid succession - display 1, display 3, display 4, display 8 - Whirl wants to purge his tanks. He blasts through the door of his apartment and breaks every flight speed limit on the main airway to Polyhex's center, heedless of however many police drones he probably pings along the way. His optics fritz and spit sparks before Whirl even reaches his row, blurring the gold glitter and light of Polyhex into a smear all around him.

He wobbles and almost stalls out when he pulls up at too sharp an angle, transfixed by the sight of his shop being torn apart. He felt most of the other watch display alarms fire off as he flew, and assumed that the worst he would find would be a disemboweled shop, stripped bare of all his precious creations. Spark-breaking, yeah, but he - he could have _fixed_ that. He could craft more watches; he has enough credit now that it wouldn't destroy him.

The Heavies are enormous. They look like they might as well have wrecking ball alts. The original frame of the shop's already pulverized into dust and silicates when Whirl judders to a halt. For a second, a desperate part of Whirl's processor screams for him to barrel in and shove them away, see if he can pluck anything intact from the debris - that pretty, bright malachite swirl, or the gold and osmium custom job he tucked into the backroom for later -

One Heavy raises a ponderous foot, and shatters the last remaining support pillar in a single, shuddering stomp. Whirl's whole frame flinches and curls in on itself, then goes slack as he sags.

He doesn't have Corps weapons anymore. He doesn't have anything. All he can do is watch, silent, as the two mechs finish reducing his home to a pile of broken parts.

He can watch, and wait, and (hate) mourn.

Whirl waits until the two Heavies lumber away from the shop and take off down the road, laughing to themselves and punching each other in rough fun, and only then does Whirl slip over the shattered threshold, dragging his pedes through the dust like it'll turn up some tiny piece he can salvage. But it's - Whirl can't - he needs to _think_ , which is impossible when all he wants is to scream and claw at the floor until all that's left of his hands are bleeding nubs -

Whirl loses a cycle or two to listing to the side, his one leg slowly sinking under him as he drifts, before he musters his determination and latent anger to check his credit account. He needs to figure out what to do to start again. Not from scratch, not like when he first flung himself into watchmaking with no safety net to catch him. Whirl has resources now, he has an established reputation as a craftsmech, he can _do_ this. He can sell custom work from his apartment until he finds another storefront available.

It'll be fine. He'll be okay.

Haha. Frag, is it a good thing he was too shocked and grieving to call the cops. Whirl's credit account does not respond when he pings it.

Whirl assumes he's entered his serial number wrong; he can't seem to stop shaking, physically or mentally, so he probably mangled a glyph by mistake.

His account does not respond.

His account does not _exist_.

(Bureaucrats move like you've lit a fire under their afts when it comes time to erase your serial number, as it turns out.)

Whirl can't go back to the apartment - he doesn't own it anymore. Doesn't have anything, anymore.

They've marked him down as [empty].

-

The Dead End is where the waste goes to rot. Every so often the boundaries of the slums will shift, whenever Polyhex's Senate branch pours enough credit into cleaning up and rebuilding the area with pretty parks and pre-planned towers and generic sculptures.

Whirl doesn't recall how he got here. Not in any real detail, anyway. He has flashes that he can pull up - snapshots of memory, of him dusting off his spare set of watchmaking tools after he sifts through the wreckage of his shop, and tucking it back in his subspace where it belongs - of him stumbling over the first mech Whirl's ever seen so strung out on circuit-speeders that his wires are melting, tacky as they slowly glue the mech to the ground - of him punching a syphoner through a wall when Whirl wakes to a sharp syphoning pump stuck in his main line, and not stopping until the mech's vocalizer gurgles on energon -

It's not as though Whirl's trying to draw attention to himself again. He just doesn't have a reason to avoid fights when they find him. He's not weaponized, but he was forged stronger and taller than most of the mechs who fall (or are constructed) this low in life, and it takes groups of ten or more cog snatchers ganging up on Whirl before his sluggish self-preservation instincts will give a rattling gasp and push him to beat a retreat. Refueling and recharging happen in a blur; Whirl's never well fed or rested here, but he never seems to starve, either - which is kind of a shame, when he thinks about it! What a waste. There are so many mechs down here who could claw their way out of the Dead End and into something better if they had a little more to work with, and yet here's Whirl, who spends most days staring at his hands because he _just won't die_.

(time - time - something's wrong with his -)

One thing keeps Whirl going. The forum's gone - Whirl finally tried with his unsecured personal comm system, consequences be fragged, but nobody came - but Whirl keeps working.

One watch. He just needs to make one watch. It's hard, gathering the parts to substitute for his old materials, but Whirl's close to finished. It doesn't need to be some fancy-schmancy scrap - it just needs to tick of its own accord. Cesium proves trickiest to obtain, but Whirl bluffs his way through the alkali metal dealer's questions and trades all the extra energon that comes into his hands. He'd feel worse about stealing, but his servos ache for want of something to work on. Something that'll fill the  [empty].

So Whirl builds it into his arm. As if he'll ever be able to afford a medic again - Whirl carefully detaches the medical port from his forearm with deft fingers and starts slotting the watch pieces into the rectangular void left under the armor plating. He sews the cold cesium device into his own wires and reroutes his fuel lines to run through the thing for power.

Ha. He'd be a fan-fragging-tastic doctor. What a shame he'd hate every second of it.

The klik he activates the watch and sets it based on his current internal chronometer reading, it feels like stepping into a shower of liquid nitrogen. _Everything_ clicks back into clarity, as though Whirl has been piloting his body from two meters away from his frame and only just now shoved his spark back into the chamber. Primus, he's _awake_.

Whirl rotates his wrist cautiously, and then looks around his current hole in a welcome burst of lucidity. He's crouched by a copper green fire in an alley; the faded orange mech on the far side of the burning barrel doesn't even glance up as Whirl shifts and swallows. Rust and scum residue coat the walls and the ground, and when Whirl looks down at his hands he hisses when he sees how much filth cakes his servos - he can barely bend the joint of his smallest servo on the left hand. And he's been hacking around in his internals like this? Fragging pit, if he gives his watch a rust infection by proxy, Whirl will - will -

Laugh, probably. But not in a fun way. His processor feels like a thin sliver of crystal close to shattering - when Whirl thinks too hard about his shop, about what he's been doing since that day, he has to shy back from the crunch and shudder of memory before he presses too hard and makes it splinter under his weight.

"S'for you again," the orange mech mumbles, so rough and choppy that Whirl thinks he's talking to himself, or something only he can see - certain circuit boosters do that to a mech, depending on what the dealer has laced it with for the day.

But then a smooth, brisk set of footsteps registers in Whirl's audials, and Whirl snaps his wrist shut with a _clack!_ , stuffing his tools back into subspace as he bristles and braces himself for confrontation.

It's a mech in a visor the color of rhodochrosite, his paint too clean and unscuffed to be an  [empty] or a leaker from this part of town. Whirl...

"Whirl," the mech says, conversationally, as if they've somehow met before. "Had a chance to think it over?"

...Whirl wants to punch him. He doesn't remember talking to whoever this is, through the clouded haze of his memories these past few years, but what can Whirl say? This mech has a _delightfully_ punchable face, and Whirl's a lot more keen on punching, as of late. "No," Whirl says, clipped, and shuffles closer to the fire. He starts humming and makes a show of waggling his servos close to the flames, like nothing else matters.

The mech smirks, spinning a metal rod in one hand as he draws closer. "Really, Whirl? The Senate could really use a mech like you. No need for hard feelings - this is a compliment! Not everyone in this cesspit is good enough at fighting to bother recruiting. The local Functionists are willing to approve it and everything. You could be _useful_."

Whirl has only vague memories of fighting; he sure as frag doesn't remember some Senate lackey being dumb enough to offer him Senate work to his face. Whirl's never taken boosters - why is his memory so muzzy? Was he really that far gone? "Then I'll tell you what I tell every Senate fragger that darkens my door." Whirl digs a mark in the ground with a fingertip, while his spark spins in bitter, vicious circles. "Go take a hot bath in a smelter."

The mech jams the metal baton into the shoulder joint of Whirl's armor, and the shock almost blows half of Whirl's fuses. His armor seizes up as his struts and cords shudder out of control, and his vocalizer can only emit a glitched stream of white noise until the shock baton yanks out of his joint. The orange mech bolts out of the alley without a word and ha. Whirl crashes forward on his hands and knees, choking on sparks, and laughs at himself. "Later, friend!" he calls after the orange mech, wondering if Whirl even knew the guy, or if they just happened to sit at the same fire without trying to kill each other.

The fragger twirls his shock baton again, squatting to seize Whirl by the back of his neck and yank his helm back. "The Senate has a _use_ for you, Whirl. Sorry? When did you get the silly idea you get a choice? And hey -" he leers, tapping the baton along Whirl's throat, "- not like you've got anything better to do with your time."

-

At first? He doesn't. He _doesn't_ have anything else left to do in his life. Getting pressganged into the Senate's service doesn't require much thought or effort, except now when Whirl gets into fights, it's with his handler pointing him at the target and shoving him forward. Hitting people is easy, even if Whirl's left with energon in his servo joints for ages afterward. Somewhere along the way, he forgot how to wince about hitting people. Before he made his watch, Whirl was too detached from reality for the guilt to register as more than a numb ripple in his processor; now, if he doesn't hit first and ask questions never, the handler's there to zap him back in line. Everyone's having the time of their life, around here!

At night, Whirl nurses his hands and curls his arm in tight to check on his watch, letting the steady count reassure him that he's still _present_ in the moment. If he has to beat people for the Senate and all their corrupt cops, Whirl wants to remember it in perfect, ice-cutting clarity. He wants to remember the face of every fragger who calls Whirl and his handler in to enforce some fresh slagging Senate-brand injustice.

Because that's the kicker. They're all cops. All of his handlers cover their shiny insignia to do the jobs, but occasionally Whirl gets hauled to the back door of the station to cool his heels before it's time to head out into the night.

It's not hope burning in his spark. He just wants to make them pay. How's _that_ for something to do with his time?

Of course, he frags it up. Whirl's starting to think he can't help but frag his whole life up. Definitely a recurring theme, here.

But what else is he supposed to do? Whirl has beaten people who forgot to pay rent money, mechs who've pissed off the wrong weapons smuggler, the occasional shopkeeper who doe-sn-t kn-ow his pla-ce - **_hahaha_** -

He doesn't think he's killed any of them. Crushed plating and snapped off wings, sure, but nothing that left anyone grey under his hands. Whirl kicks the latest mech's torso one last time, his own optics dim with the exhaustion that never seems to leave him, and staggers away, barely aware of his handler as he gets ready to stumble out the door. His part is done. All he has to be for these people is dumb metal. That's easier than thinking, a lot of the time.

"Come back here and finish the job."

Whirl tunes the handler out, usually, in anticipation for slinking out into the night. But the irritation in the mech's voice freezes Whirl in place; he looks up, slow and wary, and can't quite look his handler in the optic. "I did," Whirl says, his voice rough from disuse. The Senate doesn't have a _use_ for a _talking_ pile of dumb metal, and Whirl doesn't have a social life anymore.

"This one's on his last strike," the handler says, snapping his fingers and jabbing a servo down at the flier lying crumpled in a pool of energon on the floor. They stopped covering their helm after Whirl knocked them unconscious at the start, but he aimed most of the rest of the beating at their torso, so their face lolls, relatively unscratched. "And his alt is down as redundant. Just hurry this up. They'll melt the frame down, later."

Whirl has held big mechs down while another Senate goon deliberately unstrung their wires a foot at a time. But this - they've never asked him to do _this_. The Senate favors repurposing what it can, turning useless things into useful cogs in the machine. Repository once said it was about eliminating people that were too autonomous - aka, not pro Senate enough. Not functional enough.

Whirl closes and opens his hands, memorizing the feel of the servos in motion. Then he looks down at the flier lying offline on the floor.

"Nah. Not really feeling it," he says, confiding this mostly to his hands.

Then Whirl launches himself at his handler, and doesn't stop until two other cops with sirens blaring drag _Whirl_ to the floor and pummel him into offlining.

-

They don't let you _stay_ offline when they put you through empurata. That would defeat the purpose. Whirl gets a nice line of stimulants instead of painkillers, plugged right into his main processor fuel line.

It's not until they strip his lower arms down to the struts and carve out the 'extraneous anomaly' to properly remove his hands that Whirl starts screaming.

-

Polyhex's police force won't take him.

Whirl's largely indifferent. Sure, he'd love to kill at least twenty of the mechs on the force, but eh. Polyhex has lost its shine. Or wait. No, wait, that's just the optic downgrade. Yeah. Easy mistake to make. They reduced the number of colors he can see, and the altered depth perception has been a real horror to slog through in flight.

Whirl doesn't look at his [not hands].

Someone gets the bright idea in their head to ask _him_ where he wants to be stationed, and Whirl forces out, "Rodion," without processing why.

"I figured it out, you know," he tells his escort as they shuttle him out of Polyhex. The escort appears to be engrossed in his handheld game, but this is important. It's worth the effort it takes to ignore how dead Whirl's new, toneless voice sounds. "A cop. They want me to be a heli _cop_ ter, the fraggers. They always said puns were invincible. Not even those funky Functionists can resist 'em!"

His escort shuts down his handheld, and Whirl arrives in Rodion with his new, narrow optic socket smashed to a pulp, and both [not hands] bent backward against the transformation seams.

They really do put the fun in Functionist, around here.

-

Whirl never does find Dredger. It takes him almost half a vorn to even make the connection as to why Rodion popped into his processor, and when he finally does -

Well. Whirl gives it a good shot. Why not? He has nothing left to lose. He's already lost everything that mattered; what's one more life to drag down the drain with him?

It's funny. Super funny! Because Dredger is in maintenance. A sluicer down in the waste disposal tunnels. He _wanted_ to be a frame designer, but from what Whirl gathered over the years, Dredger never risked making the switch. Too tired, too pragmatic - but he told Whirl to come here, regardless of the risk to himself.

Mechs scuttle away when Whirl forges his way lower in Rodion, and drops into the maintenance tiers. The Rodion police force painted and polished Whirl up all pretty, so he'd at least _look_ the part of a cop, but there's no way to pretty up the deformed helm and mutilated [not hands]. Empuratees are designed to be horrifying, living reminders of what kind of terrible things the Senate can do to those who defy them.

And hey. Maybe Whirl likes being one of the terrible things.

He corners the first mech who's too slow to vanish down a side shaft and pins him to the wall. Blah, blah, something something, police brutality what? What are they gonna do, at this point? Arrest Whirl? Funnnnyyy joke. "Looking for someone," Whirl says, as conversationally as he can in a permanent monotone. His [not hands] seem to hold the mech up under their own power - they feel so distant and numb and dulled that they don't feel real. His helm is a hunk of unfamiliar metal, his new police-issued weapons and heavy armor upgrades might as well be a layer of lead wrapped all over his torso; they could have just shoved Whirl into a tank frame and told him they wanted to see him dance. "What do you say? In a chatty mood?"

The mech's shovel-blunt hands scrabble at Whirl's [not hands] \- ha, they probably have the same amount of dexterity, all told. But Whirl barely has enough sensors in his [not hands] to move them and pull a trigger; little things like pain or subtle sensation are kind of out of his league, right now. When he realizes he's not deterring Whirl, the sluicer huddles in on himself, the dark red of his optics and headlamps going dark. "Haven't seen nothing," he mumbles, avoiding Whirl's eye.

Whirl tilts his helm to the side, and when the mech looks away again, Whirl wrenches his helm close so Whirl's optic socket jams against the other mech's face. It's hilarious, really - the two of them are built with the same shitty quality optics - Whirl just has a load of police targeting systems to make up for the fact that he's only got one optic instead of a pair. But this guy thinks that makes Whirl too repulsive to look at?

It's HILARIOUS.

"I'm looking for Dredger," Whirl says. Pronouncing every glyph in Dredger's name takes longer than it used to; this vocalizer can only handle one sound at a time, so forget about the personalized, individual quirks and subvocal additions that people usually tag on over the course of their lives. Whirl can't add the extra 'w' intonation he liked to layer in his designation to hint at 'watch,' anymore. It takes him several long kliks to say Dredger's name in full.

But he must hit a sensor dead on, despite his disadvantage - the sluicer looks up sharply, nearly knocking his maskplate on Whirl's new pedipalps, his expression more confused than disgusted. "Old Dredger?" he repeats, with almost the exact same pronunciation, and Whirl's spark lifts for a half a beat - the closest he gets to excitement. "Slag. You're a cop, wouldn't _you_ know?"

Bad. Bad bad bad. Very bad answer. Whirl can't vomit properly anymore - purging his tanks would be an involved process, and he's not sure his [not hands] could unscrew all the caps in time - but Whirl can feel something start to curdle and _rot_ in his tanks. "Why. What happened," he demands, unable to force question marks into his speech while panicked.

The mech's look goes calculating, his optics scanning Whirl's a few times. "How'd you say his name, again?" he asks, and Whirl repeats it with excruciating effort.

At the very end, Whirl wraps it up with a last lilt, a syllable that implies 'quiet,' and the mech up against the wall sags, his optics full of conflicted pity. "They came lookin' for him," he says, dropping to a whisper. "You - I don't know how you knew him, but Dredger went down _deep_. Deeper than anyone's gone in millennia. They never caught him; none of us ever saw if he came back up. Primus only knows what's down there..."

And Whirl -

Haha. Whirl believes him.

It could be a lie this mech has learned to feed to prying law enforcement to cover Dredger's tracks - or maybe just a flat out lie, on the off chance this mech never knew the real Dredger and just wants an excuse for Whirl to release him - or it's the truth, but maybe a different maintenance worker knows _more_ of the truth -

Whirl stops, clamping down on that train of thought, and _thinks_. He only has two real choices. He could go deeper, keep hunting for Dredger -

Or he could let Dredger live his life, free. Whirl's done nothing but make a bitter ruin of his own life, so _why is he trying to ruin this_. That's - that's what Whirl does, he ruins lives, so this...

He doesn't say anything as he drops the sluicer, and starts slogging away down the waste tunnel back the way he came. The mech makes an aborted noise, as though to call Whirl back, but then apparently thinks better of it. His heavy, sloshing footsteps vanish faster than Whirl's; he was built for these tunnels.

Like Dredger. Dredger will be fine. Much more fine than if Whirl crashed his life like a one-mech parade of destruction.

Whirl reaches the hatch he clambered down to reach the subcity, and contemplates the rungs he needs to climb to the top. He raises one [not hand] up to his face and gives it an experimental snap. It shuts too hard and fast, the joints too basic and unrefined for any control or precision. It's more like watching a trap snap down on a turbomouse than watching something attached to his own body.

This is fine. Whirl snaps both [not hands] in the air around his face a couple of times with a bitter cackle, and then snaps the first around the highest rung he can reach. He hangs at an awkward angle for a klik before starting his way up to Rodion.

When he gets back to the station, he'll wait and see how long it takes for them to notice and replace the tracker they planted in his wrist. Smashing it with these suckers is already too easy.

**Author's Note:**

> The [refrance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism) [list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate) [is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#.22Manuscripts_don.27t_burn.22) [extensive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pO2KTnLPaI), and [shall](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/846790-terrible-things-happen-to-good-people-every-day-consequentially-i) be [treated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky) with the [respect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium_standard) it [deserves](http://www.tcbok.org/wiki/controlled-languages/).
> 
> Applebaum, Anne. _Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956._ New York: Doubleday, 2012. Print. - for the phrase 'senseless product' in particular, as well as the the quote "Everyone present understood that 'too autonomous' meant 'not pro Soviet enough,'" and refreshing me on details I'd forgotten about Soviet Russia's cultural purges.


End file.
